Peerly Human

Saturday, July 23, 2016

#14 Treat or be Treated!

This is Day 14 of our 30-day blog on the Declaration of Principles adopted by the 10th Annual Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression held in Toronto, May 14-18, 1982. I took up Sarah’s offer to write this blog series together, as a People, and so am going to share my thoughts on Principle 14.

Principle 14 reads in full as follows:

“We oppose the psychiatric system because its growing influence in education, the prisons, the military, government, industry and medicine threatens to turn society into a psychiatric state made up of two classes: those who impose treatment and those who have or are likely to have it imposed on them.”

The other day I was standing in line at the Walmart knock-off small towns must endure and I was shamelessly eavesdropping on this fascinating conversation a couple of the clerks were engaged in.

“I have a humdinger of a headache. I need to take a pill.”

“Oh, me too, plus I am depressed. I just cant get over Mom dying last year. I got an appointment with my doctor tomorrow.”

“Oh, honey, he’ll fix you right up. They know all about these things now.”

Fascinating for the content? Of course not; I am sure you have heard similar conversations a thousand times. No, it just struck me that way out here, on the eastern grasslands of frontier Colorado, in the minds of two women whose ancestors survived in this area through the wretched dustbowl years, who more than likely will be milking a cow, riding a horse, or collecting eggs before the day was out; out here, where cultural values are often decades behind the ball, where most folks do not own a computer, where in general, anything rolling out of “The City” is met with deep distrust and disdain, these two women have swallowed the lie of psychiatry hook, line and sinker. These are people who, if they cut their fingers off while harvesting corn, finish the harvest before they head over to the ER; they are bootstrap-pullers, suck it up buttercup types, endlessly climbing back on the horse that threw them. To me, that exchange between those two signaled the beginning of the end, the real end, the end where we might just get dragged off in the middle of the night & locked up somewhere because of some apple-cheeked grad student’s social assessment of us thirty years ago or something, grrr. Consider to yourself how odd it really is, where we are sad because our Mother has died, so sad, for so long, and somehow that deep sorrow necessitates a trip to your primary care physician. It means a belief that sorrow is a disease, that it is a matter for the doctor to resolve, and of course that means pills, but it also means that this is a matter for professionals to address. Lady #2 handed Ms. Sorrowful over to the pros and had no thought of offering comfort herself. Psychiatry’s grip on the dominant culture has untold effects, snatching the warm arms of community empathy from your shivering self, delivering you into a system fraught with nebulous standards and no real oversight, experimenting in lethal manners on frail souls industry-wide since its inception, strapping you down on a stainless steel table when really what you need is a warm lap and a sense of purpose.

To my mind, it is the nebulous nature of psychiatry that has allowed every entity named in Principle 14 - the education system, corrections, the military, government, industry and general medicine - to twist and reform assessment, diagnoses, ‘treatment’ and recovery markers to suit their own purposes. Show me one teacher that doesn't have an eagle eye out for ADHD, and see how drugging the loud kids allows for gigantic class sizes. The corrections industry literally writes its own diagnostic criteria and uses it to separate, sort and manage inmates, and of course, drug them to the gills. The military labels women who dare to report service rape delusional. Industry extrapolates fiscal losses they have shouldered due to worker depression. And of course, general medicine irresponsibly prescribes the vast bulk of psychiatric drugs. Which brings us to government. I don't know…. maybe I have been watching too many documentaries recently, but it seems to me the mechanisms of the industry of psychiatry fit neatly into a system that wishes to manage difficult people in whatever manner it can. Between including every imaginable human emotion in the completely fraudulent DSM, loosened civil commitment criteria, calls for reinstitutionalization in the name of public safety, and the popularization of increasingly dangerous “treatments”, it really IS true that anyone with crosshairs on them can be found to be “mentally ill” and mandated into ‘treatment’. I would even argue that if you include family members as ‘others who impose treatment’ that we HAVE achieved the Psychiatric State- it isn't a stretch. We most certainly are a different class of people, and those who are not us, even when they LOVE us, dang near always have a gleam of suspicion in the back of their eye, a quiet lookout for odd behavior, an almost mechanical, subconscious watch for subtle signs you may be tipping over… true in 1982 as well, but then, the thought of dangerousness was not automatically linked to any and all assessments.

I have my complicated theories about why this fear-driven culture seem to growing at an exponential rate, making words like, “Psychiatric State” seem plausible and reasonable, but the point is it has. I wondered for years what it would take to wake up the masses to the destructive, defective and deceptive nature of psychiatry, what type of seminal event, what horror or outrage would serve as a call to action or for reform. But, so many awful things have happened, even just right here in Colorado; people dying at the hands of laughing, cruel caretakers, perishing of preventable diseases while incarcerated, hundreds of people enduring serious physical and sexual abuse for decades, none of it matters, makes hardly a ripple on the fabric of society here in Colorado. I fear things will get much worse before they get any better; it is both frightening and heartbreaking. So, what to do? Stay informed, support each other, hunker down in your own community and create pockets of human warmth and kindness, knit your neighborhood together, that’s my plan.

I am really grateful for this opportunity and SO appreciative of all the others who are contributing to this important project!

#13. Creating a Stigmatized Class of Society

This is Day 13 of our 30-day blog on the Declaration of Principles adopted by the 10th Annual Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression held in Toronto, May 14-18, 1982. (More info here.) Today we are talking about Principle 13.

Principle 13 reads in full as follows:

We oppose the psychiatric system because it creates a stigmatized class of society which is easily oppressed and controlled.

Basic Rationale

Psychiatry would have us believing that there are two kinds of Americans. One kind of American is 'normal' - rational, hard-working, well-intentioned, respectable, well-informed. They make meaningful contributions, weigh costs and benefits, learn from experience and make socially responsible decisions.

Those who live in this 'normal' America are seen to deserve their freedom and be able to handle it. They have a right explore options, think for themselves, accept or reject expert advice. Their decisions in matters of reason, conscience and personal preference are respected all around.

Pretty much everyone wants to live in this America. It is a model for mutually respectful human relations that inspires and begets more of the same.

In the other America, the rules are totally different. Citizens are herded into this other America based on a perceived need for psychiatric involvement. We are seen as incapable of surviving safely in a free society or as lacking the capacity for socially responsible decision-making. Once there, normal legal protections are thrown out the window. Authorities decide what is best for us. Rights and freedoms are stripped away based on institutional opinion. Compliance is expected. Normal appeals to reason and human decency do not apply. Resistance, disagreement, honest statements of discontent are met with the show of force. We are locked up, drugged, secluded, restrained, electro-shocked, operated on against our will.

Decisions - even minor ones like what to eat, when to go to bed, what to watch on TV, what to wear, whether we can write an email, see our kids or give a friend a hug - are made by those 'in charge.' The fate of our lives - where we live, who we live with, whether we can parent, work or communicate with the outside world - is decided not based on personal attributes, interest or effort, but by other people's opinions of our merit and worth, rendered behind closed doors, about us without us.

Almost no one wants to live in this other America. For many of us, it the anti-thesis of America. It is a nightmare, a hell on earth. It brings out the worst in human beings and perpetuates the very negative outcomes that psychiatry is supposed to fix. The natural human desire to escape such controlling surveillance is what inspired the American dream of freedom in the first place.

The most ironic part:

Psychiatry has actually created this. But for psychiatry, its labels, the way it treats labeled people, the effects of being labeled as observed by the average eye, this stigmatized America wouldn't exist.

So the next time you're sitting around hearing everyone gripe about how bad stigma (discrimination) is and how hard it is to fix it, here's a prescription that'll fix what ails you:

End psychiatry, end labels, end stigma.

That simple.

Questions for Reflection

We are building this work together. Your lived experience is needed and valued. It is essential to building our shared knowledge and expertise as a movement. Please comment on any or all of these questions or in any way that speaks to you personally.

1. Have you ever experienced stigma or discrimination as a result of psychiatric diagnosis or treatment?

2. What would you like others of conscience to know about your experience?

3. If we were sincere in our efforts to eliminate discrimination, what would you suggest?

4. Imagine a future, where there are no psychiatric labels. How do we get there?

August 13, 2016: Conference on Principle 13

We will talk about Principle 13, including your responses, on August 13 from 9-11 PM EST. The conference will convene on BlogTalkRadio.com/TalkWithTenney.

To join:

By Phone: (1)267-521-0167

By Internet: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/talkwithtenney

We welcome your participation. Simply press #1 on your phone to speak with the show hosts.

More details are available at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/talkwithtenney

Post-Conference Reception

Those wishing to continue the discussion after the conference – or to talk informally with others who participated – may join us for the Post-Conference reception. The reception will start immediately after the conference (11 PM EST) and continue til the wee hours or for as long as there is interest.

To join:

By phone: (1)331-205-7196 (dial *67 for added privacy)

By internet: Uberconference.com/peerlyhuman

International: Local access numbers available at Uberconference.com/international

#12. Little Red Riding Hood Meets Predatory Psychiatry

This is Day 12 of our 30-day blog on the Declaration of Principles adopted by the 10th Annual Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression held in Toronto, May 14-18, 1982. (More info here.) Today we are talking about Principle 12.

Principle 12 reads in full as follows:

We oppose the psychiatric system because it feeds on the poor and powerless, the elderly , women, children, sexual minorities, people of colour and ethnic groups.

Basic Rationale

You know the story well. Little Red Riding Hood is on her way to Grandmas. She's innocent, vulnerable, carrying a basket of goodies and skipping along. She really could be any of us trying to find our way out of the woods.

Maybe she's poor, maybe she's trans, maybe her skin or race stand out. Maybe she was born female in a man's world. Maybe she skips a little too bouncy, paints her basket too bright or her goodies smell different than the pine on the path. There are a zillion possible ways that she could stand out. But we know for sure, from the perspective of her dominant surroundings, she just doesn't fit in.

You can feel in your gut what easy prey she is. This is not her forest, these are not her People, she is unprotected, this not where she belongs.

In ages past, we used to worry about wolves, big cats, bears. But essentially the predators of humankind are human beings. We feed not on flesh but on vulnerabilities. Entire industries stalk us, hungry for needs to entrap with their wares. Always they are helping you, even while researching how to ensnare.

Fortunately, most of these industries operate in the free market, They therefore at least have to convince you to buy.

Psychiatry works a little differently. It largely markets indirectly. It convinces insurers, governments and the public at large that certain of us need what they sell. Then it goes looking for ways to scoop us up - or convince others to - and impose the pre-made deals.

You can probably guess the horror awaiting at Grandmas. Red had a hard, scary trip that pushed all her buttons. Maybe she dropped the basket, wet her pants, ran the last several miles. She couldn't wait to escape the woods. She couldn't wait for the refuge, safety, protection, the big warm welcome, the full-bodied embrace, the pot on the stove or Grandma's home cooking.

Like most of us, she probably knew early on that something wasn't right. Appearances can be misleading. But eventually we figure things out. The wolf might be wearing the right clothes, saying the right words, making the right faces. But this isn't how being with Grandma actually feels.

The same is true with the Wolf of psychiatry. Yes, a great show may be made of looking the right part, saying the right things. Best interests, care, individualized, person-centered, consumer-driven... needs-based ... But the reality is that Grandma got eaten, and we're in line to be next.

That's what happens when you set up your system to reward predation. What passes for care depends mostly on how hungry the wolf is and what serves it most to feed on next. You also make it safer for wolves and encourage their breeding. You end up with more and more wolves eyeing the possibilities for expanding the pack, thereby requiring more and more meals. They also get bigger, fatter, ever more bold, ever more confident as they learn to hunt with increasing stealth and deception.

Before long, it turns out the predator has managed deeper penetration than anyone would have guessed. These days, the wolves of psychiatry and its influence seems to be everywhere. At work, in our homes, families, neighborhoods, schools, organizations, communities, governments, prisons. They've made every kind of person and human problem, literally, their business. You can't sit down for a meal or turn on the TV without hearing about the 'problem' people they feed on and why, as a country, we need to send them more food. Red's family and grandmother's cottage were just the trial run.

Questions for Reflection

1. Have you ever felt used by the psychiatric/ mental health system?

2. What would you like others of conscience to know about your experience?

3. In your experience, what factors are driving this? What makes it possible for psychiatry to use - rather than help - those it is paid to serve?

4.. Think of a time when someone providing a service actually put your needs on a par with your own. How was that different and what made it possible?

5. If we were able to shift our system of care to being less like the wolf and more like grandmas house, how do you think that would affect outcomes?

6. If we wanted to make a sincere effort to create a more power-balanced service system, what would need to happen?

August 12, 2016: Conference on Principle 12

We will talk about Principle 12, including your responses, on August 12 from 9-11 PM EST. The conference will convene on BlogTalkRadio.com/TalkWithTenney.

To join:

By Phone: (1)267-521-0167

By Internet: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/talkwithtenney

We welcome your participation. Simply press #1 on your phone to speak with the show hosts.

More details are available at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/talkwithtenney

Post-Conference Reception

Friday, July 22, 2016

#11. Subverting Economic Justice With Psychiatric 'Welfare'

This is Day 11 of our 30-day blog on the Declaration of Principles adopted by the 10th Annual Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression held in Toronto, May 14-18, 1982. (More info here.) Today we are talking about Principle 11.

Principle 11 reads in full as follows:

We oppose the psychiatric system because it invalidates the real needs of poor people by offering social welfare under the guise of psychiatric "care and treatment."

Basic Rationale

Ok, so let's begin to connect the dots on how sick and insidious the current 'healthcare' system is. The connection between poverty and so-called 'mental illness' is undeniable. But, when you read the journal articles, it's like, among the 'experts', being dense is fashionable. What should be a no-brainer is literally this big debate. Professionals are actually asking, with all appearance of being serious, Which comes first, poverty or 'mental illness'?

Ok, even without a medical degree, I can still make a credible guess. Probably nothing is more basic to healthy brain functioning than meeting basic needs: food, shelter, a safe environment, protection from the elements and toxic chemicals, somewhere to get good nutrition, sleep and rest.

These are accepted life necessities. If you can't get them, you can't function. They are the material building blocks of healthy living tissue. Healthy tissue is needed for the health of organs and systems that support healthy brains and their healthy operation. Then and only then do we get the capacity to reliably notice, attend to and learn about 'reality' (both inside us and the outer world).

Without this learning, there is no social or economic functioning. It is how we build the thoughts, feelings and actions that human beings use to relate and survive. It is also how we learn to organize and pattern our responses to environmental demands.

In other words, asking whether poverty impacts mental functioning is like asking whether your car can function without gas or oil. Without attention to basic mechanics, you can and should predict that something will break down. It's not a question of attitude, motivation or will. The vehicle simply doesn't have what it needs to stay in good repair or operate as intended. This affects not only the vehicle or driver, but everyone who wants to get somewhere and has to share the road.

Expecting poverty to fix itself is like expecting your beater to fix itself while sitting on the lot. And, blaming your beater for breaking down is nothing short of ludicrous. Maybe you know nothing about cars. Or maybe you just don't give a rip. But, if you don't attend to a few well-accepted basics, it isn't the dealer selling you a lemon. It's not the low standards of assembly line workers. There is just no way your vehicle is going to make it more than 10,000, 20,000 or 30,000 miles, given how you are treating it.

There are entire professions that make their living off of servicing human beings. You would think they would pay attention to the basic mechanics of being human. What is happening with poverty is not that much different than cars. There are a number of systems that have to work. You don't know exactly what's going to give. But if you totally screw them out of everything they need, you can be darn well sure that something - and probably a lot of things - aren't going to be right.

And, if you keep neglecting the basic mechanics, then progressively, the longer you neglect them, the worse it is going to get. Eventually, from a structural standpoint, you'll be left with a piece of junk. Yeah, perhaps you can salvage a few parts. But basically, it's a time-consuming task that will take a real master. They will have to know what to look for and where to look. They will have to put in a lot of energy into finding the remaining viability in order to rescue it from the rest of the heap.

This is what we are doing to entire communities of human beings. It is not a mystery that people and relationships, entire families, neighborhoods, generations, break down in poverty. This is not a 'mental illness.' It is not a 'clinical' disorder. It is not a 'disease' in any healthcare sense of the term.

It is the outcome - reliable, predictable, consistent - of poverty and its effects. Who wouldn't be anxious, depressed, go off, pop off, lose it, flip out, give up or out in such conditions?

Think about living this way. Think about it long and hard.

Think about having no way out. Think about not being able to sleep at night because you are too uncomfortable and too scared. Think about waking up, hungry, afraid, no heat, no AC, too hot, too cold, too tired, too broke. Think about no one to ask for help and no one you know who cares. Think about breathing dust, grease, asbestos, paint chips, insecticide, whatever got dumped in the alley or tracked up the stairs. Think about rodents and roaches and flies all around you, a pestering reality that won't go away. Think of no laundry, no way to afford it. Think of water you don't want to drink, toilets or plumbing you don't want to use.

Think about broken windows, broken locks, broken glass, holes in walls, gunshots, shouting, violence, rape, in the street, on the block, in your home, in your bed.... Think about waking up at the bottom of the ladder, low bird in pecking order, the dog everyone kicks on a bad day or just for fun.

Think about that happening not just once in a while, or for a couple of bad weeks, but every day of your life. Think about your entire known world looking down on you, seeing you as a burden, your life as a mistake. Think of all of society, every teacher, social worker, cop, storekeeper you know sizing you up and selling you short. Think of life with the constant message you don't measure up, add up, make sense; you're too much trouble, you shouldn't exist.

Think about how you would face that, deal with that, keep on keeping on, on a steady diet of encounters like that. Think about no hope, no money, no resources, no education, no encouragement, no awareness of anything else but the life like that that you know. Think about how that would impact your life - the decisions you make, your sense of your self. Think about how you'd think about others, human relationships, the world at large.

Ok, so, maybe not all of these things are there for you. Maybe its only half of them, or maybe only a few. Still pick a few. Live with them. Intimately, constantly, nagging you endlessly, year after year. No gas no oil, beater body breaking down, taking more hits every day. Beater bodies all around you, breaking down, no gas, no oil, no shop no tools, no mechanics few and far between, hits mounting exponentially around you every day:

Here are some directions I see possible for me:

Anguish, hopelessness, helplessness, fear. Agitation, activation, preoccupation, thinking nonstop, worrying nonstop, talking about it or nothing nonstop. Drinking, sexing or drugging nonstop, anything to stop the stuff that won't stop. Bullying, bluffing, bragging, buffooning. Terrorizing, egging on, goosing, gooning. Gearing up, shooting up, getting up, going down, getting ready to gun down every goon who's gunning for me or might be. Attempts to space out, zone out, run away, fly away, fry away, die away, getting outrageously high away, blowing the reality of causality as far far far away as I can possibly to get way. Raging up, roughing up, toughing up, bucking up, becoming the clown, going out on the town, going as high as the sky and never, ever coming back down...

Any way I see it, the outcome is bad. The continual stress and distress take their toll. Body and mind, the systems break down, if they ever developed at all. Shots will misfire, repairs will not happen. Thoughts, feelings, actions will miss their mark. None of us will know quite what was intended, over and over, again and again.

You would think the healthcare industry would actually make these connections. You would think this industry would be waving its arms, jumping up and down, trying to get our attention. You would think they would be telling us our whole society:

Hey, we have to take on poverty. We have to get people the building blocks of life. No one can do well without safe housing, safe neighborhoods, good food, clean water, clear air, doors that lock, windows that close.... As a bare minimum, we have to create the conditions - material and social - where people feel safe enough to eat and sleep and self-repair. Without these basics, nothing else will work. Our top priority - for research, funding and spending must go into developing this essential infrastructure that human beings need for life.

But instead this massive industry has created a massive junkyard system. In effect, it gets paid to take cars off the road, and retire them to the lot. Yeah, maybe there's a salvageable part or two. Maybe they'll get around to looking for it when they have time. But mostly they just spend their days monitoring the wreckage, guarding the gate and making sure the damage is not seen from the road.

It is the major healthcare fraud of our time. It should be clear to all America, that poverty is leaving an ugly mark. But you'd never know from what the industry experts are saying. To hear psychiatry speak, you would think that poverty plays zero role for the millions of impoverished Americans they ensnare. To hear psychiatry speak, you'd think that Americans should endure crap like this, literally crap every day and never show a sign of it. For psychiatry, that is what 'normal' means. No signs, no symptoms, no effects. Otherwise, drumroll ... here's your diagnosis. And, ta da ... here's your 'treatment.'

It is a very clever slight of hand. Professional opinion is invoked not to cure - but rather to obscure the real needs of poor people and the dark under belly of economic injustice. In an instant, our attention is directed away from the distressing real life conditions that people have to endure. All we see next is the medical rebranding and associated wares that healthcare wants to sell us. As psychiatry works its dark magic, the economic causes of human suffering - and the underlying normal human needs - all vanish from public view. Healthcare pathologies and treatment needs materialize in the blink of an eye, as does the need for treatment services. The end result is to divert billions of public dollars - taxpayer dollars that could be going to create real relief and social change - to psychiatry and the healthcare industry.

The upshot is that the needs of poor people are being appropriated by a predatory industry that is pathologizing their suffering to serve its own self interest. It is a classic case of blaming the victim, with a whole new cabal of abusers laughing all the way to the bank.

On the other hand, there is much to be learned from this for all who care to see. Poverty really is the great leveler. We are all human beings. We all have needs. We all have capacity to develop and grow. We all do better when our basic needs are met. None of us does very well for very long when they aren't.

As a case in point, suppose one day I'm a psychiatrist, making a decent income as a member of a respected profession. The next day, society wakes up. Psychiatry is seen for the fraud that it is, and my profession disappears overnight. Oops, there goes my income. There goes my reputation. There goes my ability to support my family, my lifestyle. There goes my justification for my social worth.

Supposing that happens...

Wouldn't it be nice if I found myself in a different world than the one that I'm creating?

Wouldn't it be nice if, despite my upset and confusion, nobody labeled me, drugged me or pulled the plug on my future potential?

Wouldn't it be nice if, despite my dearth of perceived social worth, people didn't denigrate me, roll their eyes, act as if I was a living germ for which there is no cure?

Wouldn't it be nice if my community didn't make me grovel, call myself ill, or submit to 'treatment' to get my basic needs met - regardless of how disappointed they were in what I had become?

If I'm really fortunately, the community I live in is sincere. They don't like the above dynamics and they don't see a role for them in our collective community life. They recognize how much hurt and damage such attitudes cause. They sincerely believe that no human being should treat another this way. In that case, they will decide not to do to me what I and my profession routinely did to others like me before we were abolished. Consider my good fortune!

Questions for Reflection

1. Have you ever had psychiatry pathology your poverty or its effects?

2. What would you like others of conscience to know about this experience?

3. In what ways has economic injustice impacted your well-being - e.g., on physical, mental, social or other levels?

4.How have the effects of economic injustice for you rippled out to others?

5. When you picture yourself in the worst of it, what were your main needs and how could they have best been met?

6. What kind of help has been most helpful to you in times of financial distress & why?

7. To alleviate the impact of economic injustice, what changes would you recommend?

8. If we were sincere in our effort to support people in financial crisis, how would our approach to these issues change?

August 11, 2016: Conference on Principle 11

We will talk about Principle 11, including your responses, on August 11 from 9-11 PM EST. The conference will convene on BlogTalkRadio.com/TalkWithTenney.

To join:

By Phone: (1)267-521-0167

By Internet: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/talkwithtenney

We welcome your participation. Simply press #1 on your phone to speak with the show hosts.

More details are available at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/talkwithtenney

Post-Conference Reception

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

#10. Social Control in the Trappings of Medicine

This is Day 10 of our 30-day blog on the Declaration of Principles adopted by the 10th Annual Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression held in Toronto, May 14-18, 1982. (More info here.) Today we are talking about Principle 10.

Principle 10 reads in full as follows:

We oppose the psychiatric system because it uses the trappings of medicine and science to mask the social control function it serves.

Basic Rationale

Frankly, I’m tired of getting sold short. Not just by psychiatry, the mental health system and the dominant culture, but also by insiders, advocates, even myself. The debate these days seems to be whether mad people should be outright controlled (by psychiatry, Murphy, the House of Representatives, the public safety crowd) or whether everyone should be a bit more tolerant because, erhm... tolerance is a good thing ....

In actual fact, mad people and mad experience are essential to our culture. There is no excuse for policing us, controlling us, converting us. You can't afford to miss or ignore us. We are creators, consciousness-raisers, and canaries for the minds of an entire culture. We are the prophets and messengers of the cultural unconscious.

The seeds of madness are not something to be poisoned or uprooted - as psychiatry claims. They are something all people - wise people, smart people, self-interested people - should encourage, nurture, cultivate. All people - wise, smart, self-interested - owe it to themselves, their families, their communities to develop mad-awareness and become mad-literate.

It’s not that difficult really. Learning to appreciate and embrace madness is not about having to put up with something you don't want. It's not about having to tolerate something illogical, incomprehensible or unsafe. It is about learning to understand and appreciate a different range of values.

“Normal” values are so accepted that practically no one sees them. These values are herd-based, material and survival-oriented: Be polite. Keep your thoughts to yourself. Keep up with the Jones. Do what the boss says. Respect authority.

“Normal” people do these things. Why? Because they embrace conventional norms that say, above all else, protect survival needs and herd membership.

How do you do this? You ‘consider the consequences’ of your actions. Before doing anything, you first ask how it affects….

my survival needs, and
my herd membership.

Thus, the two great commandments of conventional society can be summarized as follows:

Normal Rule #1. Don’t jeopardize survival needs (food, roof, family, job, safety).
Normal Rule #2: Don’t get kicked out of the herd (because it jeopardizes food, roof, family, job, safety).

When people follow those rules, psychiatry pronounces you 'rational' and ‘sane.’ If you don't, you get sent to psychiatric reformation camp.

The values and choices that get you labelled mad are entirely different. For me, fidelity to personal inner experience trumps social acceptance and material survival almost every time. It’s not that I don’t want to have a home, or food, or friends, a job or a decent standard of living. But something wells up in me that just won’t budge. I get this uncomfortable feeling inside that - although something might be popular with others - it just doesn’t feel right. I try to ignore the feeling, and for a while I usually succeed. Conventional society calls this part of me ‘having good judgment.’

It’s the other part of me that’s the problem. It’s the voice inside that won’t stop nagging: “If I can’t be honest, what’s the point? Who cares about being accepted if it means I can’t be true to myself?”

Then I get this empty hollow feeling. The one that feels like my life is a lie. And it’s all over. … I guess the [job*] will have to go. Or insert* = [appearances, approval, security, paycheck, groceries, rent... ]

Most mental health professionals – and society at large - consider this latter behavior crazy (“You told off your boss, again?”). I get called immature, impulsive and grandiose. They prescribe lithium or Depakote and write notes for SSDI. For them, my disregard of survival needs is reckless and incomprehensible. For me, it is a painful but necessary, principled choice. What else would you suggest I do?

Kill my relationship with myself
Go along to get along with conventional values
Become complicit with a community/society/world that I don't particularly want to live in
Let myself be used to perpetuate a social lie that this is actually good for people

Despite the downside from a survival and social comfort perspective, the choice to listen to inner voices like these is courageous and valuable. Somebody, somewhere has to do it. Otherwise, nothing will ever change. It’s what the mystics (the wisdom everyone quotes but no one actually follows) have been telling us for millennia.

Here’s one of my favorites:

Finally, take a look at this society we live in – rotten to the core, infected as it is with attachments. For if anyone is attached to power, money, property, to fame and success; if anyone seeks these things as if their happiness depended upon them, they will be considered productive members of society, dynamic and hardworking. In other words if they pursue these things with a driving ambition that destroys the symphony of their life and makes them hard and cold and insensitive to others and to themselves, society will look upon them as dependable citizens, and their relatives and friends will be proud of the status that they have achieved. How many so-called respectable people do you know who have retained the gentle sensitivity of love that only unattachment can offer? (pp. 115-16)

If you wish to love you must learn to see again. And if you wish to see, you must learn to give up your drug. You must tear away from the roots of society that have penetrated to the marrow. You must drop out. Externally everything will go on as before; you will continue to be in the world, but no longer of it. And in your heart you will now be free at last and utterly alone. It is only in this aloneness, this utter solitude, that dependence and desire will die, and the capacity to love is born.

-- Jesuit priest Anthony DeMello (The Way to Love, p. 140):

This is what mad people are doing all the time. It’s not a novel concept to us. It’s not something to be bandied about with admiration from a comfortable distance. We actually live this stuff. Not because we are more moral than anyone else, but because this kind of introspection, interiority, and passion (or something totally different but equally extreme) is part of our nature. The quality of our connection with ourselves, within our hearts, souls, minds and being is what fuels our existence and engages us in living. We have as little tolerance for polluting our inner selves with social untruths as polite society has for polluting outer appearances with social uncouths.

In the best of all worlds, both values systems – and the ways of being that stem from them – would be valued. Each end of the spectrum, and the myriad possibilities in between, would be seen as useful and necessary for a vibrant, healthy humanity. One choice promotes stability and ensures access to the necessities of survival. The other questions, takes a fresh look, innovates, asks if the current protocol is really useful -- and to what end… ?

It does not bode well for the collective conscience that we continue to imprison and incapacitate our most gifted messengers. Any profession truly interested in public health and welfare would be on the front lines of social change. It would be using its credibility to highlight the value of diversity in human vision and action. It would be educating families, communities, employers about the importance of outlier messages. It would be supporting understanding and working tirelessly to insure that important cultural messages were not being missed.

Psychiatry, on the other hand, has become the lead canary killer. It not only intercepts and silences the messages, it actively colludes with dominant prejudice to deny the messengers decent burial.

On the other hand: We’re all canaries in this mine of life. Each of us will get our turn.

At that point, everyone of us hopes that life really is more than practicality - more than food, drink, hours out, wages in, material survival. At that moment, every one of us is in desperate need of something more. Without the values and vision of madness - intuition, creativity, integrity, transcendence - there truly is no hope. Without the value and vision of madness, there is nothing left to carry us - or those we love - to realms that practicality can't reach.

Questions for Reflection

1. Has anyone every used medicine or science to make you conform to cultural norms?

2. What would you like people of conscience to know about your experience?

3. With the benefit if hindsight, what do you think it was that led you to feel, think or act in the ways that came to the attention of psychiatry?

4. What messages or lessons do you think there were?

5. What were the core values that motivated or inspired you?

6. Recall an experience that once confused you but no longer does. How did you go about making sense of it? Who or what helped and why?

7. You often heard it said, "Experience is the best teacher." Compare Experience as a teacher with Psychiatry as a teacher. Which would you rather learn from and why?

8. Think of the advice you would give to future generations. If we really wanted to move from social control to valuing different human experiences, what changes should we make?

August 10, 2016: Conference on Principle 10

We will talk about Principle 10, including your responses, on August 10 from 9-11 PM EST. The conference will convene on BlogTalkRadio.com/TalkWithTenney.

To join:

By Phone: (1)267-521-0167

By Internet: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/talkwithtenney

We welcome your participation. Simply press #1 on your phone to speak with the show hosts.

More details are available at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/talkwithtenney